The stars of The Killer on working with legendary director John Woo

Legendary action director John Woo, the visionary filmmaker of Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Paycheck, Broken Arrow and Hard Boiled, returns with a radical reimagining of his 1989 Hong Kong classic, The Killer. From the Oscar-winning producer of Oppenheimer, the kinetic action thriller stars Emmy nominee Nathalie Emmanuel (The Fast Saga, Game of Thrones) as Zee, a mysterious and infamous assassin known, and feared, in the Parisian underworld as the Queen of the Dead.

But when, during an assignment from her shadowy mentor and handler (Avatar’s Sam Worthington), Zee refuses to kill a blinded young woman (Diana Silvers; Ma, Booksmart) in a Paris nightclub, the decision will disintegrate Zee’s alliances, attract the attention of a savvy police investigator (Golden Globe nominee Omar Sy; Jurassic World franchise, Lupin), and plunge her into a sinister criminal conspiracy that will set her on a collision course with her own past.

Based on the 1989 motion picture written and directed by John Woo, which created a new language for genre cinema and introduced movie fans around the world to the visionary auteur, 2023’s The Killer is directed by John Woo, from a screenplay by Academy Award winner Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential, Mystic River).

Nathalie Emmanuel as assassin Zee. Zee is clinical, methodical, and merciless; there’s a reason she’s known by the moniker Queen of the Dead among the denizens of the French underworld. And while her daily routine is nothing so sinister – eating takeout shawarma in the company of her goldfish Why, solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, occasionally visiting her tailor, Tessier (Tchéky Kargo) – when Zee’s on assignment, she’s lethal, unstoppable.

To portray the enigmatic character, the filmmakers turned to Emmanuel, who rocketed to stardom as Daenerys Targaryen’s loyal lieutenant Missandei on the award-winning fantasy series Game of Thrones. She’d then gone on to earn her action movie stripes playing expert hacker Ramsey in The Fast and The Furious Saga.

The English actress says she was intrigued by the complexity of the character of Zee, and she was thrilled by the prospect of working closely with director John Woo. “When I read the script, Zee didn’t strike me as your usual kind of action lead,” Emmanuel says. “She was much more multifaceted, and she undercut so many of those tropes that we have in action, especially for women in action. I was really excited to see that on the page. And who doesn’t want to be John Woo’s action lead?”

Woo says he knew from the start that Emmanuel was the only actress for Zee. She could project the right combination of ruthlessness and vulnerability. “I immediately know that she was the right choice,” Woo says. “She is elegant and sensitive, but when you look at her eyes, you can see the toughness in her. She is also a fantastic actress. When I make an action movie, I tend to cast actors instead of just action stars.”

To Zee’s great surprise, she also gradually begins to feel an unlikely kinship to detective Sey (Omar Sy), the cop on her trail. “The dynamic between Sey and Zee is a kind of light-heartedness,” Emmanuel says. “As they are discovering each other, they realise they sort of get on. Like recognises like.”

Having served on the Parisian police force for years, Sey has witnessed plenty, and he’s learned to trust his gut and do whatever’s necessary to keep the peace. If that means flouting standard protocols from time to time, so be it. The character’s pronounced rebellious streak proved especially enticing to charismatic French actor Omar Sy, who agreed to take on the pivotal role in Woo’s latest crime film.

“I like Sey because he’s a loyal cop playing by his own rules to make real justice and really do it with all his heart,” Sy says. “It’s more about instinct and feelings, you know? He’s the good guy, but sometimes he can cross the line to do what is best. That was very interesting for me.”

Known for his memorable turns in films including the award-winning French-language hit The Intouchables as well as Jurassic World and Jurassic World Dominion, Sy most recently starred as gentleman thief Assane Diop in the Parisian-set series Lupin. For the actor, adding a John Woo film to his resume felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as he had been a lifelong admirer of the director’s work.

“I was a huge fan of John Woo movies, especially The Killer,” Sy says. “It’s a classic for me and my friends, and Face/Off. John Woo changed everything with the action movie, all the slow motion, all those new ways to picture the action. But also, if you look closely with his movies, he’s a romantic guy. There are a lot of small looks, chemistry between actors. It’s a lot about love, friendship, loyalty.”

In portraying Sey, Sy homed in on those ideals of love, friendship and loyalty, which ultimately informed both his character’s relationship with his partner Jax (Grégory Montel) and the rapport Sey develops with Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel). Sy and Emmanuel worked to build that rapport as actors as well. “Nathalie Emmanuel being the killer, it’s something exceptional,” Sy says. “She’s perfect. She’s a wonderful actress, a wonderful human being. She’s very serious, and she has a way to see the scene and add small things that I like. We had a good connection.”

Director John Woo was delighted by the impish spirit Sy displayed in scenes where Sey is sparring with Zee or other powerful adversaries, even suspected kingpin Prince Majeb Bin Faheem (Saϊd Taghmaoui). “Omar brought in a freshness of portraying a policeman,” Woo says. “He made this Dirty Harry character actually affable.”